


Lasts

by JayceCarter



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Sad, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 02:44:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15329997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayceCarter/pseuds/JayceCarter
Summary: Shepard is tired of things slipping away. Thane tries to remind her that new things always take the place of those we lose.





	Lasts

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt. Now I'm going to go cry.

 

Jane walked with steps that stilled, a rare hesitation for the legend. The first time she had visited Thane in the hospital, he’d assumed the stilted gait came from an unease with the place. Many disliked hospitals, disliked the reminder of their own mortality. They did not care to come face to face with the future they all had, preferring to live in ignorance of the inevitable.

Time showed that, as so often was the case, Jane was not as he had expected.

It was not the hospital, not the sick and dying, at least not all of them. It was him.

She could accept her own mortality, but his hurt her.

He’d considered telling her not to return. He couldn’t leave, not with his health as it was, not with Kolyat on the Citadel, but he could tell her not to come back. She would move on, she would stop hurting.

His selfishness silenced him. With so little time left, he could be generous, could accept her moving on, but he couldn’t throw away the last few chances he’d have to see her, to touch her.

The first time she’d seen him in that hospital, when he’d shown her to the room they’d given him, the ghastly white that reeked of sickness, he’d stripped her bare and worshipped every inch of her. She had been so at odds with his life. Everything was death for him; failing health, hellish treatments, sorrow. She held the darkness back by giving him a taste of life, once more. The soft gasps, the sweet moans, they’d healed his soul in a way the hospital could not.

_Beads of sweat run down between her breasts, over her stomach. Her fingers grip his shoulders as her hips roll, the sweet warmth of her breath on his shoulder. She is heat and fire holding back the coldness inside him, thawing it-_

“Thane?”

He stood, shaken from the memory. “Sorry, siha. I was lost in thought.”

“A good memory?” Her lips tilted into a crooked smile that took the years and edges from her.

“Yes. A very good memory.”

Her cheeks flushed. “Well, we could make another memory like that, if you have time.”

He had little of that, but all he had he would give to her. He reached his hand out, rewarded with hers in return.

Small hands, fragile skin. So different from him, yet far too alike. Both prideful, both stubborn, both determined.

She followed as he pulled her toward his room.

His chest already ached. The treatments lasted longer and ran out faster. Where he used to get a month or more from each treatment, it now took the first hour of every day, and by afternoon his breathing labored.

When the door slid closed behind them, he pulled her against him. She wore her casual clothing, allowing each curve and shift of her body to stroke against him, threatening to pull him backward again. It was the curse and blessing of his memory. The temptation to drift along the past instead of enduring the present.  

Her lips played against his, her fingers undoing the clasps of his suit with practiced dexterity. They were not strangers to one another, having spent so many evenings wrapped in one another. The days of uncertainty, of gentle touches to learn, those had passed them.

So many things had passed them, so many chances, so many futures had slipped away.

A pressure in his chest refused to be ignored, and Thane pulled back from the kiss. He twisted, his hand bracing him against the door as a coughing fit took him.

His head swam, his lungs struggling to produce what his body needed for basic function. It took a moment to regain his senses, wetness tracking down his cheeks from the stress, from the struggle for breath.

Jane’s hands caught his cheeks, her voice distant but coaxing. She told him to breathe, asked if she should get a doctor.

He shook his head, then twisted enough to press a kiss to her palm. “I am sorry, but I am afraid we might need to stick to less strenuous activities. Perhaps we could just talk?”

She nodded, though she wouldn’t meet his gaze. Her arm slid around him as if to take his weight, but pride had him shifting his arm until he could hold her hand, instead. A day soon would leave him unable to stand on his own, but that day had not happened yet. He would push it off as long as he could, wanted to be the man she remembered, the one she'd loved for as long as he could.

They sat on the bed, the outside of their thighs brushing against each other.

Jane stared at the far wall, her elbows on her knees, her mind as distant as his when he lost himself in memories.

Not being able to have sex might have shamed him, had he been younger, had he been a different man. He found no shame and little disappointment in it, however. While losing himself in Jane’s body pleased him, they had done that. His days grew shorter, his time thinned until hardly a thread remained, and he found the idea of hearing her voice more than he’d ever thought to have, to deserve.

“What are you thinking?”

She ran her fingers through her hair, a deep sigh on her lips. “That I’m tired of endings.”

He said nothing, knowing silence coaxed her more than words or prodding.

“Everything is slipping away. We’re looking at an ending here, Thane, and no matter what I do, I keep feeling like we’re at the end. I might have walked on Earth for the last time, I saw Miranda for the last time. My life seems to be nothing but a string lasts. The last time I do something, the last time I go somewhere, the last time I get to spend time with someone.”

“I am still here.”

She twisted to face him, the pain in her eyes worse than that in his struggling body. “But this feels like another last, another thing I love that has slipped away, just another thing I couldn’t keep. I’m losing everything, and even if everything else was gone, I can’t lose you. I can’t have you be on that list of lasts.”

Thane wanted to lie to her. He wanted to take some medicine, to pull her onto the bed, to make her believe for even a moment that she wouldn’t lose him, too. It would be unfair, though. It would be a bandaid that would tear flesh away once removed.

Instead, he took her hand in his and pulled her to her feet. “I cannot promise no more lasts. Everything ends, and perhaps that is the beauty of life, that it is fleeting, that it changes and moves and dies.” He pulled her against him, his hands on her hips before they moved to her lower back.

Jane buried her face against his chest, the wetness from the tears on her cheeks causing his scales to glisten. “You’re supposed to tell me I’m not going to lose you, you oaf.”

He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “Ah, but I do not lie to you. I can’t stop lasts from happening, but I can still give you firsts. Dance with me, a first to store in your memory, to remind you that no matter how many lasts happen, firsts happen, too.” He swayed to the music in his head, to the melodies of tunes he’d heard in his life.

Her arms slid around him, clutching him to her like she could keep the inevitable away by strength alone. “You hopeless romantic.” She followed his lead, the tension easing out of her as they moved. “You know, this might be our first and last dance.”

The truth wanted to settle between them, but Thane refused it entry. He only continued the soft movement of their bodies, the quiet memory he’d hope she’d smile on someday, in the years when he was gone and she was free of her obligations.

“Perhaps. If so, we ought to make it a good one, shouldn’t we, siha?”

  



End file.
